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British
rock 'n' roll group founded in Liverpool during the late 1950s by John
Lennon (guitar) and Paul McCartney (guitar), with George Harrison(guitar),
Stu Sutcliffe (bass), and Pete Best (drums). Although initially a skiffle
band, playing a British variation on American folk music, the band --
which went under several names before arriving at The Beatles -- incorporated
numerous American rock 'n' roll, rhythm-and-blues, and pop music influences
in their playing and songwriting, most notably the sounds of Buddy Holly,
Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Arthur Alexander, among many others.
By the early 1960s, they'd developed significant popularity
in Hamburg, Germany, where dozens of Liverpool bands were booked into
local clubs, and this soon translated to success in Liverpool, where
their mixture of solid American rock 'n roll and careful music articulation
made them unusual among the city's music scene. Sutcliffe left the band
in 1961 and McCartney took over on bass.
After taking on Brian Epstein as their manager, who
got them a hearing from George Martin, the head of EMI Records' tiny
Parlophone label, the band was signed to a recording contract in mid
1962.
Ringo Starr replaced Best on drums soon after, and
the group's line-up was complete. By the spring of 1963, their singles
and albums were breaking all previous sales records in England, and
they broke into America in February of 1964 with an appearance on The
Ed Sullivan Show, followed by a whirlwind tour.
The group had been signed to do a movie late in 1963, and
through a miracle of good luck, they were turned over to producer Walter
Shenson, director Richard Lester, and screenwriter Alun Owen, who came
up with A Hard Day's Night, probably the best rock 'n' roll movie ever
made. This film, a black-and-white documentary-style fictionalized account
of the fishbowl-lives that the Beatles were leading during the first
wave of Beatlemania, was popular with parents as well as their teenaged
children, and critics loved it as well (Andrew Sarris called it "the
Citizen Kane of juke box movies"). The mix of the four personalities
-- Ringo's honest, earthy clownish presence, George's cutting, funny
personality, Paul's pleasant, engaging presence, and John's snide, sarcastic
wit -- won over audiences around the world. Their follow-up movie, Help!
was made on a much bigger budget, in color, but it failed to repeat
A Hard Day's Night's success, suffering from an unfocused script and
a good but not great selection of songs. The group was generally as
unhappy with the results as everyone else was, although it did make
money and did have some entertaining moments. They tried directing and
producing their own television feature, The Magical Mistery Tour, but
the result -- outside of a couple of scenes and a handful of good songs
-- were amateurish. And in 1968 they provided the songs for the psychedelic
animated feature Yellow Submarine, and made a brief on-screen appearance
at the movie's conclusion. Their final break-up in
1969 was chronicled in the documentary Let It Be,directed by Michael
Lindsay-Hogg, with very impressive results. The group's exposure to
movie-making whetted their appetite for filmmaking on a variety of levels.
John Lennon played an acting role in Richard Lester's anti-war satire
How I Won The War, while Paul McCartney wrote the score for the John
and Roy Boulting comedy The Family Way (1966), and Ringo Starr acted
in the film Candy, while George Harrison produced the soundtrack to
the Indian movie Wonderwall.
During the late 1960's and early 1970's, the Beatles'
corporate entity, Apple, acquired the distribution rights to various
movies, including El Topo and La Grande Bouffe, and made various films,
most notably benefit The Concert For Bangladesh by George Harrison and
Born To Boogie directed and produced by Ringo Starr, who also took an
occasional acting role, most notably in the David Puttnam-produced period
drama That'll Be The Day. Paul McCartney did the title song for the
1973 James Bond movie Live And Let Die, but it was George Harrison who
became the most active of the Beatles in filmmaking, through his company
Handmade Films, which helped produce such hit pictures as Monty Python's
The Life of Brian and the fantasy Time Bandits. The
end of the 1970's also saw the lingering mystique of the Beatles parodied
by Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle and Bonzo Dog Band founder Neil Innes
in the film The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, in which George Harrison
appeared.
--
Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
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